Letters to the Editor

In “Where Are All the Buddhist Schools?” (Fall 2026), Barbara Roether claims that the Middle Way School is the only Buddhist grade school in America. Tzu Chi has the Walnut Elementary School in Walnut, California. The City of Ten Thousand Buddhas has a school in Talmage, California. There’s the Hongwanji Mission School and Pacific Buddhist Academy in Honolulu, Hawaii.

Roether also claims “that educated, resource-rich Buddhists have built universities, but not elementary schools, is itself telling. It suggests that for many Western practitioners, Buddhism remains an adult acquisition, a path discovered rather than inherited.”

That’s neglecting these schools that have been around for decades, servicing many immigrant and nonheritage families and youth. These are strange and misleading claims. As someone from upstate New York, yes, I think it would be wonderful if we had more dharma and education centers for all communities and ages, but that’s a gross oversight of the historic West Coast Buddhist communities.

–Cai Yuexin

Barbara Roether’s response: 

Dear Cai Yuexin, 

While I take full responsibility for these oversights, it is always good news to hear of more opportunities for Buddhist education in America. Your note brings up several issues that made identifying Buddhist schools difficult during my research. For example, the Tzu Chi Walnut Elementary School never uses the word “Buddhist” in its website or literature. It’s true that if one delves further into the separate Tzu Chi Education foundation site, its Buddhist origins with the Taiwanese nun Cheng Yen become clear. But should I have described it as a Buddhist school when their school administration chooses not to? The Tara Redwood School, at the Land of Medicine Buddha center, near Santa Cruz, also chooses not to describe itself as a Buddhist school but as a “Creating Compassionate Cultures” school. No doubt there are other Buddhist-inspired schools that want to avoid labeling themselves as such. I took the position of following the outward-facing identities of these schools, using the information that an interested parent might have ready access to. Because the Instilling Goodness Elementary School and the Developing Virtue Secondary School exist fully within the gated monastery at the City of 10,000 Buddhas in Ukiah, I considered them a program of the monastery rather than a separate school. The schools in Hawaii should have been included. In stating that specifically Western practitioners have built universities rather than primary schools, it was not my intention to overlook the long-standing practices of the Asian communities of the West Coast. Since Chinese immigrants built the first Buddhist temple in San Francisco in 1853, these Asian communities—Japanese, Vietnamese, Cambodian, and others—have been the original guardians and supporters of Buddhism in America. I taught in these communities, and I know that the Buddhist centers and temples continue to provide a rich array of Buddhist educational opportunities for their children and help to shape the local culture. Beginning to try to define the parameters of Buddhist schools was part of my intention; much more work remains. 

 

Reading “On Pain” by Douglas J. Penick (Summer 2026) made me reflect on something I occasionally struggle with in Buddhism. Of course an article about pain is going to focus on suffering, but the sheer catalog of ways we might suffer—discomfort, headaches, fear, despair, aging, sickness, accidents, bereavement, cancer, terrorism, torture, and war—felt quite overwhelming. It also reflects something I find difficult more broadly in Buddhism: that suffering can seem to be the starting point and dominant lens, summed up in the familiar phrase “life is suffering.” I understand why dukkha is central to Buddhist teaching, but sometimes this cumulative emphasis can leave Buddhism feeling rather bleak to me.

Life also contains joy, friendship, beauty, humor, love, and contentment. I suppose what I’m looking for is balance: acknowledging suffering without dwelling on all the terrible ways it might find us. For me, equanimity means making room for the whole experience of being alive—the difficult and the wonderful.

–Tony Cruse

 

I read “What Should Ten Years of Buddhist Practice Make Possible?” by Cem Sen (Tricycle online, August 2026) only this morning, so maybe it’s too early to say, but I think this one will stay with me. I laughed at “Are we there yet?” because I have asked that question, in that exact tone, more than once over the years. The answer here is harder than the one I wanted. Look back, not forward. Has the anger changed? How am I with the people close to me? Honestly, I never count these things.

The part about debt touched something personal. I know what debt does to a person on the material side of life. I realized at some point while reading that the real debt was never the material one. And, strangely, knowing that there is a door out changes everything, even before anything is paid. I wrote this line down: “Every intention not only creates a result in the outer world. It also determines what kind of mind we are becoming.”

To the question “Are beings safe around me?”—I don’t have a comfortable answer yet. That’s probably the point.

Thank you. Spring comes, and the grass grows by itself.

–Korcan Atabay 

 

Upon receiving my current issue (Fall 2026) of Tricycle, I, as is my usual habit, browsed through the pages before focusing on any one article. To my surprise—and utter synchronicity—I was struck by the article “Writing into the Void,” an interview by James Shaheen in which novelist and Zen priest Ruth Ozeki discusses her first collection of short stories.  

The synchronicity is due to the fact that I had borrowed this very book from my local library, a book now resting on my bedside table alongside my copy of Tricycle, the same week. I read and enjoyed Ms. Ozeki’s novel A Tale for the Time Being a few years ago and wanted to explore her short stories. This article shed a light on how Buddhist teachings influence her writing. Now, I am eager to read the remaining short stories, many of which seem to feature, in one way or another, a typewriter as one of the characters. A visualization appeared of the typewriter I used during my high school years in the late 1950s—a pink Smith Corona portable! Thank you for both the teachings and the memories!

–Dorothy Jaltuch

 

Dear Tricycle, thank you so much for hosting Reverend Mark Unno for these five sessions (Tricycle meditation group, August 2026). I have been a Buddhist for twenty years, and a member of the New York Buddhist Church (Jodo Shinshu) since mid-2025. I don’t live in New York City but participate in the organization’s online programs, which are truly meaningful. I was inspired to try Shin Buddhism in large part due to Rev. Unno’s teachings. His wonderful talk today sums up my understanding of the Shin approach. It is full of joy and creativity without sugarcoating the challenges we all face. I have participated in many of Tricycle’s Monday meditation meetings, and have enjoyed getting to know the teachers and the various approaches to meditation. We are so lucky to have all of this dharmic richness available to us.  

Many blessings to you,

–Aurore Eaton

 

I read “The Art of Talking” (Tricycle online, August 2026) with interest, and with some surprise. Friedemann Schulz von Thun is a thoughtful psychologist, but the attitude he defends here is frankly the opposite of what the tradition calls samvega—a concept Tricycle itself has written about. Samvega is the deliberate admission of existential shock, seen in the five remembrances, maranasati, and the story of Kisa Gotami. All of these work by giving the thought of death more room, not less, so that it can set practice in motion. Schulz von Thun says explicitly that one should not give too much power to thoughts of the end, and when asked whether images of death might awaken an awareness of finitude—which is precisely the samvega mechanism—he answers “no.” That is a perfectly respectable stance, closer to Epicurus or Montaigne than to the suttas, but framing it as an “implicit spirituality” that reflects on impermanence in a Buddhist sense stretches things. The one genuine point of contact—the epiphany on the stairs—is what the tradition places after samvega, the calm clarity of pasada, but arrived at without the shock that is supposed to precede it. I would have welcomed a short note from the editors acknowledging that tension rather than smoothing it over.

–Jarosław Płuciennik

 

Thank you, Ayya Soma, for this thoughtful and in-depth exploration of what ethical food choices entail in today’s world (“Ethical Diets: Veganism and Omnivorism in Early Buddhism,” Tricycle online Dharma Talk, September 2026). The Tricycle email announcing this Dharma Talk arrived two days after I was discussing with my partner my growing unease with eating meat on account of the incredible cruelty the industrial farming system puts animals through. Ayya Soma’s talk has given me a great deal to think about as I seek to reduce my support for earth- and life-destroying systems. Also, it was very refreshing to hear her talk about real issues of power, control, suffering, and destruction of life beyond the abstract and general ways in which these are often discussed by Western Buddhist teachers and in Buddhist circles. I look forward to engaging with more of her teachings. 

–Arif Pervaiz